Military
Stories about military and national security missions in orbit.
Suspected Chinese Spy Balloon Hanging Out Over Continental US
On Thursday, the Pentagon announced that it is tracking a high-altitude surveillance balloon over the continental US. The balloon is suspected to be Chinese in origin. Based on the fact patterns, we’re not really rushing to conclusions when we say Washington has a high level of analytic confidence that the balloon is definitely Chinese in…
US Places Sanctions on Spacety
On Friday, the US Treasury Department placed sanctions on Spacety, a Chinese smallsat developer and SAR provider, due its ties to Russian paramilitary organization Wagner Group. Backing up: The Wagner Group is Russia’s private military firm and is credited with major crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine, the Central African Republic, and Mali. The…
Aerospace & Defense Primes Report Q4, Full-Year 2022 Earnings
The aerospace & defense (A&D) primes started reporting fourth-quarter results on Tuesday, with Raytheon ($RTX) teeing off first, followed by Lockheed Martin ($LMT), Boeing ($BA), General Dynamics ($GD), and Northrop Grumman ($NOC) this morning. Across the board, companies’ results and forward-looking projections were on the one hand buoyed by sky-high American and allied defense budgets.…
NASA and DARPA Partner on Nuclear Thermal Propulsion
After a 50-year hiatus, the US is planning to test a nuclear fission-powered thermal propulsion system on a spacecraft. NASA said this week that it would team up with DARPA, the Pentagon’s R&D arm, to build, launch, and demonstrate a nuclear thermal engine. This early work is intended to pave the way for a crewed…
Roscosmos and Arianespace Consider Exchange
Roscosmos and Arianespace are in talks to swap a batch of OneWeb satellites for several Soyuz components that have each been stranded in each other’s territory since February of last year, RussianSpaceWeb reports. The road to today: When Russia invaded Ukraine in Feb. 2022, collaboration between Russia and Europe came to an almost immediate halt.…
Exclusive: Euroconsult Values 2022 Space Economy at $464B
In its flagship Space Economy Report published this morning, Paris-based Euroconsult finds that the space market grew 8% in 2022. This report is the gold standard for market intelligence on the end-to-end space economy, from upstream manufacturers to downstream service providers and end users across civil, military, and commercial space. The space value chain… …as…
SpaceX Launches Transporter-6 Mission with Stacked Manifest
For the first orbital launch of 2023, SpaceX’s Transporter-6 mission launched 114 small satellites into orbit. The spacecraft on the manifest ranged from cubesats to hosted payloads to orbital transfer vehicles (OTVs). The Transporter satellite rideshare missions increasingly remind us of nesting dolls, as they launch space vehicles that in turn deploy even more space…
Q4 2022 News Roundup
Can you believe 2022 is nearly over? It’s been a jam-packed year for the space industry, full of groundbreaking moments in science, turbulence in the markets and world order; substantive policy developments; and historic mission firsts. We’re kicking off our year-end coverage by looking at objects closest in the rear-view mirror. Payload combed through the…
Lawmakers Release FY23 Compromise NDAA Bill
Last week, Congress released a compromise defense bill with $858B in topline funding. That represents a ~10% annual increase over last year. The fine text: The fiscal year 2023 (FY23) National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) compromise bill went to the House floor last week, and was passed in the lower chamber by a 350-80 vote.…
The Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA): An Explainer
Note: This article refers to the National Defense Space Architecture (NDSA), which has since been renamed the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA). Over the last few years, the space industry has grown by leaps and bounds, pushing our space capabilities forward at an unprecedented rate. While its weapons systems may be fast, the Pentagon’s procurement…
SpaceX Unveils Starshield
On Friday, SpaceX added a new page to its website for Starshield. The product is billed as a secure satellite networking solution for government users and national security missions, and it marks the latest expansion of SpaceX’s portfolio of services. Starshield’s initial focus spans three functions: Extra security baked in…Beyond the end-to-end encryption protocols standard…
Philippine Commander Says China Seized Space Debris
Space debris x South China Sea…the crossover nobody asked for. On Monday, a Philippine military commander accused China of forcibly seizing a big piece of metal—most likely space debris—that the former nation’s navy was towing through the South China Sea. The course of events, per Philippine Vice Admiral Alberto Carlos’s telling: Beijing’s take: China’s foreign…
Military Spaceplane Returns Home, After 900+ Days in Space
After 908 days in space—and smashing its own previous orbital endurance record in July—the Boeing-built, US Air & Space Force-operated X-37B has returned to Earth. The reusable military spaceplane touched down Saturday at 5:22am at NASA Kennedy’s Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility. Oh (TV-6), the places you’ll go… Orbital Test Vehicle-6, as the name suggests,…
